


keys to the gulag

by sarsaparillia



Series: through a window, brightly [5]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Vulnerability is Hard When You're Marian Hawke, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28964937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarsaparillia/pseuds/sarsaparillia
Summary: Varric, Hawke, and a conversation about love.
Relationships: Female Hawke & Varric Tethras, background f!hawke/isabela - Relationship
Series: through a window, brightly [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1087146
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	keys to the gulag

**Author's Note:**

> **notes** : the gulag is hawke's feelings, just so we're all clear  
>  **notes2** : _masterpiece theatre iii_ — marianas trench.

—

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"I think I'm in love."

"Oh? Who is it this time? Norah? Elegant? Don't say Aveline, I don't think I could take it."

"No," says Hawke, sighs. "Bela."

"Oh," says Varric, fingers stilling on the cards as he pauses to stare at her. "Oh, _shit_."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Varric," huffs out into the air, and Marian Hawke collapses into the chair to his left. "Excellent, really, you _do_ know how to woo a girl!"

It's quiet between them for a moment. Hawke stares unseeingly into the fire. Varric waits for the other shoe to drop; Hawke is notorious for these kinds of conversations, flopping down next to him and dramatically tossing an arm over her eyes to bemoan her existence. She falls in love four times a week: with the grocery girl come Lowtown, with the pretty Chantry sister who preaches on the quay, with the Blooming Rose's runner, with—

The list goes on, is Varric's point.

But this isn't like that.

Hawke doesn't do anything. She sits there, no theatrics at all. Just quiet.

And Varric stares some more.

"Wait, seriously?" he says. " _Rivaini_? You're kidding, right?"

"No," murmurs Hawke. "No, I don't think I am."

"Oh, _shit_ ," Varric says once more, with feeling. "Shit, Hawke! I take it back, say Aveline!"

She laughs, a little soft and a little hollow, leaning into his side. She's slim, Hawke, slim and sharp as one of her daggers, beautiful and clean like a new knife. But there are shadows to her face, now, smeared beneath the astringent blue of her eyes. Her head on his shoulder is a heavy weight. "It's really terrible, isn't it. Of all people, I picked Bela."

"You coulda picked _anyone_ , and you picked Rivaini," agrees Varric, nodding solemnly.

"She's going to be the death of me."

"Oh, probably," Varric says. He nudges her, gentle. "You shouldn't date your friends, killer, that's just asking for trouble."

Hawke nods into his side. If it were anyone else, Varric would call it miserable, but it's not, on Hawke. Somehow, on her, it just seems—acceptable. Less like a dagger between the ribs.

"Wasn't really planning on it, you know," she mutters. "Falling in love. Stupid of me, honestly. That's Bethy's job!"

"I kinda don't think that's a thing most people have a choice about, Hawke," Varric tells her, only a smidge wry. "And I'm gonna tell her you said that."

"She picked a templar. Maker, she's a mage! She hasn't a brain in her skull!"

"And _you_ picked Rivani, so who has it worse, huh?"

"Please don't remind me."

Varric glances down at the top of Hawke's dark head, eyebrow crooked. She's shrunk into herself, a slow exhale as though everything inside of her has crumpled. He knows that she's not so good at letting people see her inner squeezing guts. He knows what this honesty costs her. He can appreciate it.

But shit, Hawke wouldn't know vulnerability if it hit her in the face.

"You told her, yet?" he asks, quietly.

She laughs again, but this time sharp and breaking. "I'm still breathing, aren't I?"

"I'll take that as a _no_ , then."

"Yes, no, definitely not. Not yet. Maybe not ever."

"Why not? You _do_ have a thing for crazy, everyone knows it. And I mean, if you gotta pick one of our friends…"

"It's—I don't know, Varric! I can't explain it. I heard her laugh yesterday and I think I went cross-eyed! And it's _Bela_! What am I _doing_?"

"Making bad life decisions."

"Thanks for that," Hawke sighs a second time, closes her eyes. "Not wrong, though."

Varric pats her hand. "Nah, usually not."

They sit there together for a while, not speaking. The faint din of the Hanged Man roars in the distance: twining laughter, the _clunk_ of tankard against tabletop, Norah shouting at Corff for more swill. Varric thinks that they could close the door, and then Hawke might be able to work past the lump living at the top of her throat.

Varric knows her down to her brittle bitter bones. Sometimes, it's hard.

"Have you?" she asks, after a moment. 

"What?"

"Fallen in love."

Varric puffs about a breath. They've talked about it, before—talked _around_ it, too, and that's worse, because Hawke sees right through him and always has—when he holds onto Bianca too tightly, singing her war songs. "Yeah. Once."

"Are you ever going to tell me the story?"

"How about you tell Rivani you like her, first?"

Hawke smiles against his arm, the pale line of her mouth curling upwards with her sudden fondness. "Ouch. My dwarf just stabbed me."

"You'll live," says Varric, terrible with affection. "It could be worse. I could be Bartrand."

"No, never, you'd hate the attention too much," Hawke says, face splitting wider into a true grin. Her teeth shine in the firelight for a brief moment, blinding. "Can you imagine? You'd have to write letters to Orzammar!"

"I have to do that already, Hawke," Varric says, sour.

"That's true," she says, but she's still grinning.

Varric squints down at her. The hauntings in her eyes have withdrawn back behind their shutters, and she's just Hawke again, vicious and delighted and red, violent red. She never really figured out how to let people have her hollowness, for all that she picks up strays and brings them home and builds herself into them like a dam to hold the loneliness back.

Varric can't talk, though.

He picked her, too. It was a lot of years ago, but he did pick her, too.

"I'm not surprised, you know."

"Sorry?"

"You and Rivaini," Varric says. Comes out a little looser than he'd expected it to, but the longer he thinks about it, the more it makes sense. Hawke's wild, and Rivaini's wild, and they make each other laugh, and they make each other careful in a way that he doesn't know how to describe, and maybe that's saying something because Varric's been telling tales for as long as he's been able to breathe. "I can't say I'm surprised."

"Maker's saggy ballsack, Varric, you told me to take it back!"

"C'mon, Hawke. If I told you out of the blue that I was dating Blondie, what would you have said?"

Hawke rolls this thought around in her mouth, chewing on it. "…Alright, fine, maybe you've a point. But it's not—this isn't Anders, though, is it? It's Isabela. It's always—always Bela, Varric. Always."

"And you're sure it's not just sex?"

"If it were, I don't think it would hurt so much," Hawke says, so quietly that Varric has to strain to hear. A muscle twitches in her jaw. "The sex is—well, fine, the sex is incredible, if you must know, but it's—"

Hawke cuts the words off, shakes her head. The darkly shorn sheaves of her hair fall over her eyes, and then she's laughing shakily through it. "Maybe I really have lost the plot. It's not as though she wants it, either. She said she didn't! But I—she—"

"Talk to me, Hawke," Varric says, not unkindly.

"It always feels like coming home, Varric."

"Every time?"

"Every time," says Hawke, and slumps against him ever further. "Every bloody time."

Varric loops an arm around her, because it's all he knows how to do. He thinks about Bianca—the girl and not the crossbow, as far away as the Guild wants her to be so they don't start _another_ clan war—and wonders if he'd been this hard to watch. Probably not to Bartrand. Varric doesn't think Bartrand would be able to survive experiencing an emotion as nauseating as sympathy. His brother's head would explode, and Varric might not even laugh.

Shit. He really _is_ getting old.

"You gonna be okay?" he asks, instead.

"Aveline would be very upset at me if I threw myself on her sword, wouldn't she? Ugh, it'd be such a mess. So I suppose I'll survive, if I must."

"Yeah, you're gonna be fine," Varric says. He ruffles her hair, and Hawke lets him. "Now, you want in, or not?"

Hawke grins, a bright sharp gleam, and pulls out the Song he'd tucked into the lining of his sleeve when he'd thought she hadn't been looking. "Of course, darling! And I'm certain you have no idea how _this_ got here. Maybe put it away, hm?"

Varric chokes on his own laughter, plucks the card from her fingers to slide it back into the centre of the deck. He loves her so much he can't stand it.

And it's a long time, several games and several drinks later, when Hawke's folded her arms on the tabletop and rested her chin against them, when she finally returns to it. He knew she would; Hawke doesn't know how to leave well enough alone. She looks at him with liquor-clear eyes, and she's finally herself again, young and bright and laughing behind the eyes. Something goes very soft inside his chest.

"Hey, Varric?" says Hawke.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"Yeah, Hawke, I know," says Varric. He smiles out of the corner of his mouth, and deals again. "Don't worry about it."

—

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 _fin_.


End file.
